by Joseph Manning, Head of Learning and Curriculum at spunout
Ireland’s youth information and support platform, spunout, has developed a new digital resource to help young people find effective ways of responding to online harm and support their peers in online spaces.
Through consultations with their Youth Action Panels, spunout was aware of concerns young people aged 16–25 have surrounding online harms like cyberbullying, harassment, discrimination and hate speech, misinformation, echo chambers and harmful online communities. Many young people spunout spoke to didn’t know what steps they could take if they experienced harm or saw someone else being mistreated online.
Spunout responded to these challenges by creating Empathy Online, a free, self-directed learning course that explores why people behave in harmful ways in online spaces, and what the learner can do to reduce online harm. Along with practical tools for responding to harmful behaviours, the course focuses on building empathy, self-compassion, and supportive online communities.
Empathy Online uses bitesize information, videos with subject matter experts, young people sharing their lived experiences of the online world, and interactive activities to help learners turn their empathy and self-compassion into action.
Empathy Online has been validated by experts and real young people to ensure all course content is accurate, up to date, useful, and relevant to young people’s needs. The course is flexible, interactive, and can be completed at the learner’s own pace, making it ideal for young people, but also volunteers, or staff in organisations that work with young people or in online spaces.
Now that Empathy Online is live, spunout is working to find ways for it to reach people who could benefit most from it. If you would like to discuss explore how we can make Empathy Online available to more people, reach out to Joseph Morning, spunout’s Head of Learning and Curriculum.
Empathy Online is available for free on spunout’s online learning platform for mental health and emotional wellbeing, spunout academy. Learn more or enrol here.
